In the Desert

Chapter Three

Although Brighton wasn’t a complete stranger to late nights and drinking, the night out with Baskia and Kira, followed by the night in with Brendan, chewed her up and spit her out, resulting in a monologue by her mother about when she was twenty and the wild times she and Eliezer had. Claire was the only person who used her dad’s full name. She lengthened the letter L and let the long -er resonate like music, making it sound sacred. On the rare times Brighton actually uttered her father’s name aloud, she simply used El.

The ache in her head and the exhaustion in her veins made her heavy and mossy, as if she wanted to stick to the couch. She gazed across the room at El’s beloved Les Paul guitar mounted on the wall.

“You should play more,” Claire said, knowing her daughter had the skill to coax the same beautiful, discordant, and artful melodies out of the instrument as her father had. Brighton preferred to be blind and deaf to the possibility of that fact.

She hadn’t realized she’d stared at the guitar so obviously. On days like that, when her heart ached along with her head, she wanted the soothing loops of vibration as she plucked each string, as waves of sound washed over her like a blanket of warm water. But at the same time, being that close to her father’s memory left her helpless under the weight of the grief already bruising her from the inside.

“I miss him every day. It’s ok for you to miss him too,” Claire said as if the words were like company.

Stubbornly, Brighton didn’t want just to miss him—a cheap consolation prize after his death. It didn’t really mean anything. Missing someone wasn’t something to unravel, parse out, or put on display. It was stale, pointless, and made her cry. She just wanted him back.

It wasn’t her fault the hotel room that he'd slept in had caught on fire. It wasn’t her fault he’d taken sleeping pills because he was on his sixtieth day of touring and had major jet lag. It wasn’t her fault he was a musician in a band that spread itself all over the world, taking him away from his family the one time Claire had to tend to her own father who was dying in the hospital.

Brighton pressed her eyes closed. None of it was her fault, and yet she had to deal with it, every single day.

Claire sighed as she neared the couch. When she sat down, the cushions shifted, and she drew her daughter’s legs onto her lap. “You used to fit in my arms. Now you’re a grown woman. I can’t tell you how to deal with grief, even after all these years. But my sweet girl, you have to figure out how, otherwise, it’ll just keep you from shining like the beautiful, bright star that you are.”

She patted Brighton’s leg. “Your father didn’t name you Brighton for nothing. He said you were his sea-bright star, when they twinkle over the water. He said Brighton, England was his favorite place on earth, as long as we were there with him. You were his wild mountain child, where the stars glowed so vividly it’s hard to tell one from another. He said you were his desert princess, shimmering above the sands, mysterious and true. He said you were the light of his fire, shining through the jungle leaves.”

Brighton let one tear slip for each clear memory she had of her dad. Her mother drew her close and rocked her gently, whispering one song, among many, El used to sing her to sleep.

When Claire’s voice quieted, the house phone rang—a rare occurrence in the age of cellular connectivity—jarring them both from the relaxed place of peace where they jointly remembered the man that they’d loved in their own ways.

Claire scooted out from under Brighton’s legs and went to retrieve the telephone. From the other room, she heard her mother’s voice, overly loud and chipper. It wasn’t the firm voice she used with telemarketers, or the one she used for clients, associates either—though they never called the apartment anymore. Nor was it the response to bad news. Brighton tried to place it, but her mother’s humming echoed in her ears, drawing her back to the sticky place of emotions.